Howzat! High-tech help for cricket

LONDON -- It is the last ball of a series-deciding cricket test with the batting side's last man in.

The bowler trundles in, sends down a delivery that strikes the batsman on his pads and the fielding side unites in a chorus of appeal for leg before wicket (LBW).

Instead of instantly raising his finger to tell the batsman he is out, the umpire raises a device something like a pager, consults its trigonometric projections and dismisses the batsman along with a nation's hopes.

A military-inspired calculator has just decided the series.

Just not cricket? The creators of a new LBW predictor say it is poised to become central to the game's future.

The technology is called the Hawk-eye and is being developed in Britain by rocket scientists at the German company Siemens.

"It is a lot more accurate than the umpire," said Paul Hawkins, a Hawk-eye developer at Siemens.

"It can predict the trajectory of the ball down to a couple of millimetres."

Hawkins said the company was the world leader in "tracking things" after many years working with military missiles.

Channel 4 is planning to include the Hawk-eye in its cricket broadcasts from next summer.

No longer the sole domain of leather and willow, cricket has become a world of "red zones," "radar guns" and "stump cams."

The latest device to be introduced to viewers was last season's "snickometer" -- which seeks to show whether a batsman hit a ball before being caught by displaying the sound frequency pattern at the instant the ball passed the bat.

That technology was the brainchild of Alan Plaskett, who is also in the race with a new LBW predictor.

He is currently negotiating with an Australian broadcaster over his new creation after it was trialled during broadcasts of a recent series in India.

Plaskett's business used to only concern itself with electronic patents for medical devices, but the success of the "snickometer" has encouraged him to branch out.

"It has certainly paid for itself and has become the standard bearer for this type of technology," he said.

Despite criticisms that some of the new additions are televisual gimmicks, British, Australian and South African broadcasters continue to tussle over being the first to get the next innovation to air.

"It's important to keep improving the product and this technology is there. If we didn't use it someone else would," Frances said.